Table at 7? L.A. begs to differ How full the restaurants weren't

Now we were getting somewhere. If a restaurant can "turn the tables" -- that is, serve two parties at any given table in one evening -- it can most efficiently accommodate the greatest number of diners, maximizing "flow" and, therefore, profit. The idea is to take one big batch of diners from, say, 6:30 to 8 and another from 8:30 to 10.

Chinois-on-Main, Wolfgang Puck's 24-year-old restaurant in Santa Monica, long has had an official two-seating policy; don't even try to make a reservation at 7:30 on a weekend -- it's strictly 6:30 or earlier or 8:30 or later.

Chinois-on-Main's policy doesn't alienate many diners because the restaurant is upfront about it. Plus the restaurant is busy, so such a policy makes sense: Diners are happy to get in, happy to sit in a busy room.

"But it defeats the purpose," Sautto himself pointed out, "when the restaurant isn't busy."

Perhaps that's what was going on when I called Katsuya in Brentwood on a Sunday afternoon asking for a 7 o'clock reservation that night. I was offered 6:30 or 8:30, and took 6:30. My party of three was seated in the back room, which was half-empty. At 7 -- the time we had wanted -- there were three empty tables for four. At 7:55, only four of 10 tables were ccupied. Clearly they could have taken us at 7.

When the manager, Matt Erickson, stopped by our table as we were having dessert to ask whether we had enjoyed our dinner, I gestured to the half-empty room, told him about my conversation with the reservationist and asked why we weren't accommodated at the time we preferred.

"Well, that's ridiculous," he said. "It's Sunday night and we're not busy -- you should have been able to have a table whenever you wanted it."

Yet when asked what diners can do to avoid or overcome such treatment, neither Erickson nor any of the other managers interviewed came up with any practical suggestions. (Erickson suggested simply showing up at the time you want, whether or not you have a reservation, or insisting on speaking with a manager if you don't get a time you like.)

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'They're only managers'

COMMON sense would dictate that restaurants are shooting themselves in the foot with such tactics -- after all, it's very easy to just say "never mind" if you don't get a reservation that works for you, or to think twice about returning to a restaurant where the reservation was a hassle and on top of it you wound up sitting in an empty room. It sets up a relationship between diner and restaurant that feels adversarial. It's alienating at best; it's certainly not hospitable.